books.google.com - For more than two decades, Edmund White has been widely recognized as America’s preeminent gay writer. “He has a novelist’s eye for the telling detail or the remarkable phrase and, like Proust himself, concentrates upon the minutiae of the past so that it might live again,” wrote The New York...https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Boy_s_Own_Story.html?id=nxbzAAAAMAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareA Boy's Own Story

A Boy's Own Story

For more than two decades, Edmund White has been widely recognized as America’s preeminent gay writer. “He has a novelist’s eye for the telling detail or the remarkable phrase and, like Proust himself, concentrates upon the minutiae of the past so that it might live again,” wrote The New York Times Book Review. “White possesses the rare combination of a po-etic sense of language and an ironic sense of humor,” declared Newsweek. “[He] is unquestionably the foremost American gay novelist.” Commemorating the twentieth anni-versary of A Boy’s Own Story, this Modern Library edition presents White’s autobiographical novel together with an Introduction by prizewinning novelist Allan Gurganus and a new Afterword by the author himself.

A Boy’s Own Story, with equal parts stunning lyricism and unabashed humor, traces a nameless narrator’s coming-of-age in the 1950s. Struggling with his homosexuality, the narrator seeks the consolations of a fantastic imagination and fills his head with romantic expectations (“I believed without a doubt in a better world, which was adulthood or New York or Paris or love.”) His distant, divorced parents exacerbate his hunger for emotional connection, and he endures the unhelpful attentions of a priest and a psychoanalyst. In time, he recognizes the need to be loved by the men in his life and, in the surprising conclusion, escapes his childhood forever with one unforgettable act.

“With A Boy’s Own Story, American literature is larger by one classic novel,” wrote The Washington Post Book World. “No reader, straight or gay . . . can fail to experience shock after shock of recognition in these pages, and few, I would bet, will be able to withhold a one-to-one sympathy from the unnamed narrator, even when he is being, by the standards of only yesterday, ‘shocking.’”

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LibraryThing Review

User Review - booklover3258 - LibraryThing

I made it to page 16 and I couldn't read anymore. It is truly a personal thing for me than anything. It was not my type of book I would normally read but I gave it a shot. After 15 pages, I had to stop.Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review - Kiddboyblue - LibraryThing

I find myself drawn to coming of age stories, especially well written ones, such as "A Boys Own Story," for many reasons. One of which is a one sided view of the characters that make up this one ...Read full review

About the author (1982)

Edmund White was born in Cincinnati in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical trilogy A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples and Skinned Alive, a collection of short stories. He is also the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Jean Genet, a short study of Proust, a travel book about gay America--States of Desire--and Our Paris. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and teaches at Princeton University. Edmund White lives in New York City.